It's strange, thinks Ellen as she stares into the dark blue beyond the train window, to be living with your parents after living on your own for so many years. Well, she's living with her in-laws, not her parents, but the sentiment is basically the same: it's a matter of having felt, very concretely, a sense of one's independence, only to trade it back in exchange for some stability. What happened was that New York City was too expensive and awash with people in their later twenties who needed to cover loan payments and a few thousand dollars in rent every month. They were all in competition for the same jobs, the same apartments, the same lifestyle: God knows where they'd gotten such ideas. Actually, from the quiet and peace of Upstate New York to where she was returning now, like she did ev...